Analysts criticise EA's MOH Taliban cut

[wraggster]

Videogame analysts have criticised EA for renaming Medal of Honor's Taliban faction to Opposing Force, one even accusing the US company of "caving in".

Today EA confirmed it had dropped the Taliban moniker for the faction that fights against Allied forces in the multiplayer section of the game.

It said it took the decision in response to feedback from soldiers and their families.

"I'm a little surprised and disappointed," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter told Eurogamer.

"I think that the political pressure is pretty silly, and don't think most gamers care. While it's definitely in bad taste to play as the Taliban, it's historically accurate to portray the conflict as having two sides, and technically appropriate to allow a player to play either side.

"The crazy thing is that there has been no uproar about the ability to play the Nazis in Call of Duty multiplayer, and that's been offered for a long time.

Nobody can claim that the Taliban are any more evil than the Nazis, but apparently the Politically Correct police don't care about bad guys from their parents' or grandparents' generation.

"My preference is to see developers make games the way that they want, and to let the market decide if it's a good idea or a bad idea. In this case, the backlash wasn't from the gaming community, but from the press, and I think it's a mistake to cave in.

"For the record, I'm not a fan of the Taliban, and wouldn't mind seeing them fight the Nazis in a game, so that no matter who wins, one of them always loses - sort of like Alien vs. Predator."

Last month EA CEO John Riccitiello blamed the controversy surrounding Medal of Honor on the media.

"No one noticed [the game] ... until a journalist decided to put the game box in front of a mom who'd lost her son in Afghanistan to create some controversy," he said. "I think that says more about the newspapers than it does the game industry."

Colin Sebastian, of Lazard Capital Markets, said EA "probably wants to have its cake and eat it too".

"The game has already benefited from a lot of free publicity from the Taliban issue, and so they can now take the high road and remove that label from the game.

"On the other hand, I suspect they also don't want to take the risk that the issue blows out of proportion and distracts from the other qualities of the game."

Medal of Honor will release for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 15th October.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...oh-taliban-cut

[trigazer]

this is like a bad joke that u cant make fun of apparently because of the time frame were in. After all, we played as Nazis and Russian red army factions but we cant play as the taliban because its "too soon". Maybe 30 years from now it would be ok.

[Fonixx]

Could be sooner than 30 years, just depends how much oil forgiveness costs these days.

[John Vattic]

Cant play as taliban because in the 80's america trained taliban to fight the russians. and people arent supposed to remember history.

too soon? didnt they just have a call of duty when you play as a undercover cia agent hosing down civilians in an airport?

video games are supposed to be art, not mind control and programming. Perhaps the "shock value" fad will die off like it should to make way for better art.

[rancor01]

I guarantee programmers left the option in somewhere in the game code. In a few years some "hacker" will find the enable code when all of this fanfare has died down.